Howard, from my perspective, one key reason to choose Ghost 10 is the fact that it is manufactured by Symantec and sold primarily to corporate customers under the brand “LiveState Recovery.” As a consequence, an individual consumer receives the research & development and technical enhancements that arise from deploying and maintaining a mission-critical corporate application.

Although Acronis also sells their product into the corporate environment as well, there is simply no comparison between the two companies: Acronis has annual sales of US$0.7 million, whereas for Symantec the corresponding number is US$2,582 million. As a consequence, Symantec possesses the substantial resources required to ensure that Ghost is a successful and reliable product.

Howard, from my perspective, one key reason to choose Ghost 10 is the fact that it is manufactured by Symantec and sold primarily to corporate customers under the brand “LiveState Recovery.” As a consequence, an individual consumer receives the research & development and technical enhancements that arise from deploying and maintaining a mission-critical corporate application.

Although Acronis also sells their product into the corporate environment as well, there is simply no comparison between the two companies: Acronis has annual sales of US$0.7 million, whereas for Symantec the corresponding number is US$2,582 million. As a consequence, Symantec possesses the substantial resources required to ensure that Ghost is a successful and reliable product.

Since Ghost is from Symantec, I consider that a rather big negative.

Symantec's support is awful.They dropped their forums years ago. a company their size can most certainly afford to support, and staff, forums.Not to mention the (lack of quality) in customer service and support from India.

Small size for a company is not a negative in software, and Acronis does participate in forums for their products.

Howard, it appears that we disagree concerning the importance of the company in choosing an image backup product.

It is not necessarily true that a more substantial company will produce a better product than a smaller and resource-constrained company, but from a practical and commonsensical perspective it is quite likely to be true. R&D, support, product enhancement – these activities all cost money: which Symantec has, and Acronis doesn’t. I find it reassuring that major corporations have entrusted their mission-critical backup needs to the same product (Ghost) that I use on my home PC.

The reason why the revenues of Acronis are so low as compared to Symantec is quite easy to understand: the former has fewer customers than the latter! What can you infer from this about reliability, support, functionality, and performance? Quite a bit, I believe. Quite a bit, indeed.

Howard, it appears that we disagree concerning the importance of the company in choosing an image backup product.

It is not necessarily true that a more substantial company will produce a better product than a smaller and resource-constrained company, but from a practical and commonsensical perspective it is quite likely to be true. R&D, support, product enhancement – these activities all cost money: which Symantec has, and Acronis doesn’t. I find it reassuring that major corporations have entrusted their mission-critical backup needs to the same product (Ghost) that I use on my home PC.

The reason why the revenues of Acronis are so low as compared to Symantec is quite easy to understand: the former has fewer customers than the latter! What can you infer from this about reliability, support, functionality, and performance? Quite a bit, I believe. Quite a bit, indeed.

Size is not relevant. Indeed, the opposite is often true.

Cheap products sell more copies.Ghost is just about given away in Symantec bundles. The only reason I even tried it was due to the $0 after rebate price.

Acronis does a poor job of selling the product, e.g., making it harder to find resellers.